From: LouisFors <LouisFors@aol.com>
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Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1998 18:31:07 EST
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Subject: A thought while Rowing in Eden
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One of very many provocative points that Smith makes in Rowing in Eden
concerns ED's preference for calligraphic publishing of her poems, and her
mistrust of fixing material in print.  One knows about ED's concern for
material that was altered in print during her lifetime, but Smith makes a
convincing case that her preference for calligraphic orthography was not
merely a matter of being "burned" by editors, but goes much deeper, pointing
to an art form ED preferred that was unique--beyond the editorial problems
associated with putting text into print.  (I wonder what ED would have done
with xerography had it been available?  That question goes to the point of how
much she distrusted mechanical reproduction of any kind.  We'll never know, of
course.)

Smith's discussion of the foregoing reminds me--by a leap--of a Great Divide
in human history, a divide on one side of which is orality and on the other
side of which is literacy. There is a great deal of literature about the
technologizing of the word (I think Walter Ong may have invented that phrase)
by writing, and, later, by print.  There is no question that writing, and
particularly print, *fixed* our modes of thinking in ways that orality did
not. It is pointless to argue which is *better*, of course.  It's simply a
fact of history.  One can speak about the characteristics of oral cultures as
contrasted with literate cultures, of course.

The leap that takes me from the orality/literacy question to ED's strong
preference for orthography is that she apparently stood on one side of a
similar divide between written correspondence (and poetic production) while
the rest of the literary world had long since been stiving hell bent into
print.  I wonder if ED ever spoke about the oral nature of poetry, a state
that she may have struggled to emulate with her personal calligraphy that
Smith describes.  On the other hand, my feeling about poetry as basically an
oral form may be peculiar to our time or to me.  I quickly think of e.e.
cummings as I write the foregoing.  His material was highly visual, although I
have often read it aloud to myself to help me understand.

I'm afraid I haven't stated my emerging feeling very well.  But, as ED
apparently felt, the reader is a major component in finding sense or nonsense,
even in these afternoon ramblings.

Louis Forsdale